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French Freedom of Speech

The mayor of Calais is suing Marine Le Pen of the Front National for saying "repeatedly" that citizens in Calais need a pass issued by the mayor to get to their own homes (because of the number of migrants in the town). In fact, the passes are issued by the police prefecture.

Who's en colère today?

The SNCF (toujours eux), regional train employees in the Lyons area guaranteeing unpleasant travel from the 17th-21st December
Also yet another strike by Sud-Rail, a particularly truculent SNCF union in the south of France, this time five days in January: 6,7, 21, 22 and 23. "We have no choice." Right.

Sedulia's Sites

There used to be a few more grands magasins (major department stores) in Paris than there are now. When I first visited long ago, there was even still the Trois Quartiers, a store by Madeleine. It has been through many metamorphoses since then but has never seemed to be commercially successful. There was also the beautiful (from the outside) Samaritaine*, which closed ten years ago for extensive work that everyone understood the need for– frankly, the place was a firetrap with its narrow wooden escalators and crowded floors. At the time, the management said it would rehire everyone after the renovation, but no one believed them. In the end, they fired everyone after paying severance, and the Samaritaine is now supposed to be turning into a much more profitable office and apartment building. We Parisians miss the old place because it was on the Seine, with public access; the rooftop restaurant of the Samaritaine had one of the best views in the city.

The Samaritaine in 2007

Now there are still the four stalwarts, Galeries Lafayette (one of the two or three biggest department stores in Europe), Printemps, the Bon Marché (in spite of its name, which means "cheap," it's one of the more upper-crust ones, not as frequented by tourists and in the heart of the most expensive Paris real estate), and the Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville, or BHV, pronounced Bay Ahsh Vay. It's across the street from the Hôtel de Ville–which is the Paris City Hall, not a hotel, as some tourists find out every day!

BHV is especially famous for its quincaillerie or hardware section. That may not sound fun to you, but that's because you haven't been there. When you wander the halls of its fabulous bazaar of brass numbers, hooks, door-fittings and keys, its gardening tools, its classical old French enameled signs, its bells and its birdhouses, I promise you will find something you like and haven't seen before. This is the place Parisians go for hardware if they can't find it in their local neighborhood shop. It also has a great home section where if it's your kind of thing you can browse for tassels or picture frames to your heart's content.

And while you may find Parisians turning up their noses at you for going to "les Galeries" (where the store intercom announcements are made in Russian, Chinese and Arabic, among others, and there are literally bouncers at the Longchamp, Dior and Chanel boutiques), no one in Paris will blame you for loving BHV.

I don't like to go there at Christmas, though. The last time I did, there were so many people that firemen were stationed at the escalators to avoid pileups.

Because I am what my family calls the Queen of Guidebooks, I couldn't resist this "Paris Survival Kit" I bought in a Paris museum recently, while on the prowl for something completely different. Isn't it it cute? Look how there's even a little fake hole at the top for the display rack.

I bought it because of the genuine information I found in it, such as a few places to eat, work, or send visitors; also because it's fun to see how real Parisians look at themselves– this book is aimed at them. The only foreigners to get their own chapter in the book are Americans. But don't be flattered! Despite the scholarly-looking preface from the (bogus) Harvard professor John P. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D (the real author got it right in having him dateline it Cape Cod, July 2015), the book's Americans are there strictly to be avoided.

How do you learn to identify (and avoid) Americans in Paris?

1) The American in Paris smiles.

This physiognomic particularity should warn you, since in Paris no one ever smiles. (see Gueule [attitude], p. 64)

2) The American in Paris is loud

You won't even have to bother looking around the restaurant to identify the Americans who have infiltrated the clientele. The background noise will tell you quite enough. Moreover, the American in Paris is the only person to call the waiter "Garçon," even when it's a waitress.

3) The American in Paris lives in an amusement park.

For the expat American, "Paris is a moveable feast," as Hemingway wrote, which shows you how completely he got things wrong. When you explain that your Paris life is nothing but an exhausting series of underground journeys, interminable office hours, and dreary evenings, the American in Paris laughs! Because as for him, he is having a great time going out, eating and drinking!

It's not even an exaggeration to say that NO ONE but Americans is on the Île Saint-Louis. Our American– an upper manager in a multinational company, a gallery owner endemic to the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, or perhaps a journalist for CNN–can therefore well afford to hire you as a private tutor of the French language.

The seventh arrondissement, especially buildings with a view of the Eiffel Tower, are also prized by members of the American upper class [in English in the original], who choose to live there in the hopes of making their friends back home jealous with their Facebook photos.

The Fantasy of the "True Paris"

A serious mental disorder affects the American in Paris: the Fantasy of the "True Paris," which is a sort of Stendhal Syndrome in reverse. The American Bohemian in Paris–possibly a jazz musician, a painter at Place du Tertre, a Yin Yoga teacher, a waiter at Breakfast in America, or another kind of artiste–has abandoned a job in a huge agrofood business to live simply, devoted to the discovery of the "True Paris."

What is the True Paris? It's a complex mixture of clichés that groups together the films of Jean-Luc Godard, perfume ads, Bateaux-Mouches tourist brochures, and of course scenes from the movie Amélie. The American in Paris, therefore, must struggle every day to be convinced that Paris resembles this fantasy.

Note: The American in Paris (fifty- to sixty-year-olds version) is the only person who still believes in existentialism and that Rive Gauche cellars are still wild places.

I was hurrying home to get there ahead of the delivery men when I passed a greengrocer where I have an old acquaintance I'm very fond of. I waved at him and we called out a greeting and I was still smiling as I turned back to the street.

"Ah, le joli sourire !" said a man behind me. I turned around to see who it was. The man behind me looked roughly like the man in the picture above, but was smiling beatifically.

"Vous êtes célibataire ?" he asked.

I laughed and went on. Later, he came into a chocolate shop where I was buying some fruits enrobés (yum!) and handed out a leaflet to the cashier without noticing me. After he left, I asked if I could see it. They fished it out of the wastepaper basket and handed it to me. "Front de la libération de la France !" I read, but couldn't make heads or tails of it after that.

I once saw a roomful of American women in Paris bidding on a small box of Kraft Mac & Cheese. The bidding went up to about $20 (in today's money).

This summer, I went to a Walmart in the town where my mother lives. It was only July, but I guess after the Fourth is over, Halloween is the next big holiday. Anyway, the Halloween decorations and candy were out in force, taking up almost a whole aisle of the store. I was appalled. (Christmas started in September.)

But of course, if you're an American and want to celebrate your kind of Halloween in Paris, you either have to bring your own things over from the States (you probably won't have remembered), or buy them here. Oh là là! €3,50 ($4) for about ten candy corn!

In the U.S., there are gated communities. Paris has its own versions– these private streets, which abound in the 16th arrondissement. Usually you have to know a code to get in. One of them, the Villa Montmorency in the southern half, Auteuil, even has full-time guards who patrol the streets and monitor the gates. Inside, behind the screen of trees, is one of the very few (or the only?) places in Paris where large private one-family houses exist with gardens and even swimming pools.

As you can imagine, the Villa Montmorency been a favorite of the rich and famous for many years. Céline Dion, Laurent Dassault (airplanes), Wladimir Taittinger (champagne), Arnaud Lagardère (Lagardère Group, a giant international media company that owns, among many others, the Hachette group), Alain Afflelou (glasses), Tarak Ben Ammar (movies), Carla Bruni (Sarkozy's wife), Zlatan Ibrahimovich (soccer), Xavier Niel (internet), Sylvie Vartan (singer famous in the 60s and 70s), Carole Bouquet (movie star), all live there behind the gates, enjoying the privacy. Servants and "personnel" are not allowed to drive on the streets of the Villa; they have to go in the back way, and every dwelling must be at least 150 square meters, with no subletting allowed. It's a "preserve of the rich that makes le tout-Paris daydream."

There never used to be houses for sale there, back when the French economy was booming, but now there are plenty–if you want to pay €8 to €50 million, and are prepared for France's taxes. Apparently, not enough people are. The rich foreigners who might buy in central Paris don't want to live so far away (apparently the only foreigners are "a Chinese and a Russian," Ibrahimovich, plus an Indonesian who bought last year), and the "franco-Français" are leery of the image of a "ghetto for the rich." Possibly another reason is the giant public housing project going up next door, whose inhabitants will be able to see down into it.

At the end of the summer, I lost a good friend. It was a shock– I didn't even know he was ill till the day of his death. I have had to go to my share of funerals in France, but this was the first time it has been for a close friend. I flew to his family's home city for the funeral, and for the first time, I went with the family to the graveyard.

The graveyards in France look very different from American ones, which no doubt were modeled after British. In the U.S., cemeteries are full of traditionally shaped tombstones– and these days, often of bronze or stone plaques set into the ground–and always have grass, trees and flowers. French graveyards, though, are small cities of stone, with lanes between. Père Lachaise, in Paris (below), is an unusually beautiful one. The graves are very often like this: little "houses" or chapels, or more commonly, large family graves in which one generation after another is buried under stone.

Arriving at the ancient chapel where the service was held, I saw the family standing outside, greeting everyone. They looked shell-shocked, but managed wan smiles. The coffin arrived in a hearse, and was carried by six pallbearers in black into the small church. We filed in after it.

Everyone at the funeral was dressed in black, even the children– there were several small ones, sitting solemnly in the front. After a beautiful short service, the priest led the pallbearers, carrying the coffin, and the family out of the church. We all walked slowly behind the family to the nearby graveyard. In the old days, the pallbearers would have walked first. Now, they put the coffin into a hearse for the short distance. As we walked, passersby stopped their chatter and stood aside respectfully.

We came to the old graveyard on a hill. It was a peaceful place with a beautiful view, but crowded with high stone tombs. We filed through the narrow paths to a monument with the family name on it. Two workers in black with crowbars, who had been waiting there, then pried off the stone slab from the front of the tomb. Inside and underneath the stone cover, a small black caveau, or vault, opened up, with at least ten coffins of various eras piled inside like bricks below the path. It was so odd to think of them just sitting there for generation after generation.

The priest said a last blessing. Last year he had officiated at a family wedding. He had been so ill then that everyone had been worried about his health, and here he was burying his younger friend instead. The pallbearers now carried the casket to the tomb. One of the workmen climbed inside and gently guided it as it slid on top of the other family coffins. Then he climbed out again, and the stone front was put back and sealed up. My friend was in his final resting place. It seemed so chilly, dark, and unfinished.

It was oddly unsatisfying. I realized I had never before seen a funeral where the coffin was not put into the ground, with the family around. In most of the U.S. funerals I've been to, it is also traditional for people to take a handful of earth and throw it on top of the coffin to say goodbye.

My friend's daughter came to stand beside me. She put her hand on my arm and said, "It is strange for you, isn't it? From the movies, I know that Americans put the coffin right into the earth."

I nodded, afraid to talk. My friend, a lover of history, had wanted to be buried in that graveyard where so many of his ancestors lay. His daughter told me that, in spite of the family name on it, the grave did not belong to close relatives, but to distant cousins who, on learning of the sudden death, had offered a place in their family vault. The graveyard was full and otherwise unavailable, so it was a great kindness. "No one does that kind of thing," someone told me later. "It shows you how much everyone loved him."

"I would have preferred to put the coffin into the earth– it seems more natural," my friend's daughter said. "But Papa would have been happy."

An English-speaking businessman who speaks near-perfect French told me this story.

"One of my top employees was very competent, but everyone had a really hard time with her. She was so harsh and hard that I decided I had to have a word with her.

"I called her in and said, 'You're extremely valuable to the company, but you have a problem. You've got to be nicer to people. Frankly, you're a bit of a garce.' "

"She froze and glared at me. Then she relaxed and said, 'I forgot, you're not a native French speaker. You don't realize the impact of your words. But you can't call me garce! You mustn't ever call me that!"

"I realized I must have made a mistake. 'What should I have said, then?'

"She thought for a moment and then said, 'You can say I have a difficult character.' "

"She's now in politics, by the way," he added. "She's quite successful."

Elaine Sciolino in ParisOf the N.Y. Times (or as it prefers to be known, The N.Y. Times) and writer of La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life

Le Franco PhoneyA long-term Australian expat in a French ski resort. I can't believe it took me so long to discover this one.

The Compleat AngloI have to like a blog that is named The Compleat Anglo. An Englishman married to his Madame, in the Basque country

Flipflop France23-year-old Sasha, an Oregonian from Forks (town made famous by the Twilight vampire saga), has settled down in France's second city, Lyons. [No that isn't a mistake. I spell it the old-fashioned English way.]